Pongrácz Erzsébet: The Cinemas of Budapest - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1998)

side, which even as a member of the ART Chain has remained faithful to its traditions and audiences, educating, with its filmed fairy tales, generation after generation of discerning cinemagoers.

Toldi BBS Studio Cinema (1924)

36-38 Bajcsy-Zsilinszky út, district 1/

Vilmos Császár út, a major thoroughfare full of shops and banks, and its neighbouring sidestreets had everything a street had to offer in the thirties - but there were hardly any cinemas. Sándor Winter, whose by then well-known cinematographic company was involved in the co-production as well as domestic production of films, thought it was high time he opened a cinema for his company. Thus it was that in 1934 he discovered the “City” picture house on the Kiskörút (Little Boulevard). The neighbourhood, which bustled with life in the daytime, was deserted after office hours when the shops and banks closed and people had left for home. However, when Winter introduced his novel ideas - his establishment was the first to release serials composed of short films - cinema and its audiences soon came together. Such was the success that in a few years the City had become one of the most popular cinemas in Pest. The French picture The Miracle Pilot, for example, ran for six and a half consecutive months.

The name Szittya, thought up in the forties, was shortlived to be replaced by City once again. The old name,

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